More on the lying liars...

Krugman examines the GOP's health care repeal attack against the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office's finding that the reform will reduce long-term deficits and repeal adds to the deficit significantly.   Surprise! - their "refudiation" of the CBO is just a bunch of lies.   More here and here.

Comments

[Jamie]

I think the heart of the matter that GOP soundbytes are circling is that, if you were to take away the mandate and the associated subsidies but still keep the bulk of the insurance company regulations and the Pharma Medicare compromises then you could reduce the cost of medicine (for those who can afford it) without increasing federal spending. This seems to me like the genuine conservative position, but no Republican is suggesting this. So again the public is left with two choices: accept Obama's pro-business, compromises or be thrown to the wolves. Apparently there is no longer room in American politics for actual liberals or conservatives; it is pretty much "third-way" centrism or petty fascism.

[reg]

I'm not a health care expert and have no such pretensions and haven't read the CBO report, but I'm pretty sure that if you took away the mandate or some other form of "universalizing" coverage (and frankly just expanding Medicare to all would be preferable and cheaper IMHO), the "good" stuff that everybody likes - like not denying insurance because of pre-existing conditions, and regulating the % of premium income that must be used for coverage rather than overhead and profits - would drive up insurance costs astronomically.

And the real issue with health care costs isn't federal deficits so much as % of GDP that's eaten by the health care and health insurance industries. Ours is ridiculously higher than those countries with excellent health care systems and some form of public or regulated private single payer coverage for most everybody, France probably being the best example. Even if we don't have a "reformed" health care insurance system, the lack of constraint on a profit-oriented health industry in the US will eat our GDP and contribute to overall economic decline that's epitomized by our borrowing fetish, outsourcing industrial jobs and letting our "finance" overlords hold the country hostage.

[Jamie]

Yes, I agree that the most important part of the deal was getting us closer to total coverage and single-payer and I appreciate that the Democrats accomplished politically realistic compromises in that direction. The whole discussion was poisoned by the naked pandering of the GOP.

One example: it was supposedly a scandal that Obama horse-traded with the pharmaceutical companies to get them to give on drug costs in return for a larger market. The GOP, as worshipers of free markets, should counter with a proposal to make drug providers actually bid for Medicare price agreements. That seems like common sense to anyone not in bed with the industry and would be an actual market-based benefit for consumers.

Instead the GOP comes up with a proposal to allow insurers to "sell across state lines", i.e. evade laws passed by States to regulate their own commerce without Federal interference. What would Scalia say?

The GOP's rhetoric has so skewed the political landscape that the Democrats are populists for asking the industry to screw us a little more gently.